Report on student academic skills ranks NS students below average
Posted Nov 28, 2011 03:57:22 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Nova Scotia is in the middle of the pack when it comes to the performance of students in math, science and reading.
The Council of Ministers of Education has released the latest Pan-Canadian Assessment, which measured the performance of 32,000 grade eight students in math, reading and science.
The 2010 assessment focused heavily on math and shows 53 per cent of Nova Scotia students are performing at the expected level, with 34% exceeding expectations.
The mean score for Canada as a whole was 500; Nova Scotia scored a 474 which was in the middle of the group of provinces that scored below the mean.
In science and reading Nova Scotia also finished just below the national mean with a score of 489 in both categories.
Nova Scotia Education Minister Ramona Jennex, also the chair of the CMEC, says that’s still pretty good.
“For a small province, you know we’re less than a million people, I think that we need to be aware that those results are very good for us,” she says.
She says the data can now be used to help dialogue between education ministers across the country.
“We can work with each other and see which provinces are ahead, what we can learn from them and what their best practices are,” she says.
Ontario and Alberta were the only two provinces to score at or above the mean in all three categories.
